"If you be good..."

[E. O. Batchelder]

A graduate student in linguistics here comes to me for native-speaker
judgments, and he is working on the English subjunctive.  When he gave me
the sentence,

a)  If you be quiet, I'll take you to the zoo.

I was startled.  I remember sentences of this form from my childhood, but I
had never noticed that they were subjunctive, perhaps because of the
similarity to the imperative:

b)  Be good, and I'll take you to the zoo.

Then he gave me variations to judge, and I found it difficult.

c)  If you be a good girl, I'll take you to the zoo.

d)  If you be naughty, I'll spank you.

e)  If you never be naughty again, I won't tell your father that you broke
the vase.

f)  If you not stop crying, I'll slap you.

The a) sentence feels to me like a frozen form, limited to that structure
and context -- BE + adjective [behavior desired by parent] + promise
[behavior desired by child].  I seem to have trouble modifying that in any
way.

What do you all think, either as English speakers or as linguists, or both?
Do any of the CHILDES corpora have

Thanks,
Eleanor


--
Eleanor Olds Batchelder, Ph. D.
Institute of Psychology, University of Tsukuba
http://www.human.tsukuba.ac.jp/~eleanorb
[an alternate email address is: eleanor at abacus.hunter.cuny.edu]
voice:  0298-53-7376
Mail address:  Azuma 4-16-4-401
               Tsukuba, Ibaraki, JAPAN 305-0031

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